54 Hattie Plum Williams 
this care, and often ungrateful children abuse their unaccustomed 
liberty by deserting their parents or leaving them to live alone. 
This is one of the especial grievances which the older people have 
against America, and which keeps some of them from joining 
their children here. When, therefore, the child comes to be con- 
sidered an economic liability instead of an asset, and when he 
ceases to serve the purposes of an old age pension, the size of the 
family will automatically decrease. 
Sex relations among the Russian Germans as revealed by the 
Statistics of illegitimacy are remarkably pure, the ratio of illegiti- 
mate to each 100 births in the Protestant colonies on the Volga 
being an average of 1.4 for the years 1906, 1907 and 1908.27 The 
rates for the European countries are unusually high and for the 
United States, very low. In 18g, Russia, which ranked among 
the lowest, had 3.1 illegitimate births out of each 100 births.28 
In 1886-1890, the illegitimate births ranged from LAN per OS 
for Austria to 3.1 for Holland, with Germany showing 9.3 and 
Great Britain 4.8. On the other hand, Rhode Island in rgo1 had 
1.3 illegitimate per 100 total births, and in Connecticut, the rate 
was 1.1.*° It is true that the statistics on this subject are difficult 
to interpret. The temptation to conceal these births is as great 
as, or greater than, the carelessness in reporting other births. 
Moreover, with the growth of medical science and the unre- 
strained practices of vicious doctors, criminal prevention plays a 
part unsuspected by the public and all too large. Where custom 
and law demand the immediate marriage of the guilty parties, the 
real conditions are concealed in the statistics which report all 
children born in wedlock as legitimate. But the comparative 
standards of Americans and Europeans, as shown in the statistics, 
are borne out by travelers who find a vast difference among people 
of every stratum of society—peasants, middle classes, university 
students, and social leaders. 
The purity of the Russian German family life as shown by the 
low percentage of illegitimacy may be accounted for partially by the 
27 Friedensboten Kalender, 1908, 130; 1909, 131; IQIO, I3I. 
28 New International Encyclopedia, IX, 804. 
29 Bailey, Modern Social Conditions, 121. 
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